A Near-Infrared Wide-Field Proper Motion Search for Brown Dwarfs

Abstract

A common proper motion survey of M dwarf stars within 8 pc of the Sun reveals no new stellar or brown dwarf companions at wide separations (~100-1400 AU). This survey tests whether the brown dwarf ``desert'' extends to large separations around M dwarf stars and further explores the census of the solar neighborhood. The sample includes 66 stars north of -30 degrees and within 8 pc of the Sun. Existing first epoch images are compared to new J-band images of the same fields an average of 7 years later to reveal proper motion companions within a ~4 arcminute radius of the primary star. No new companions are detected to a J-band limiting magnitude of ~16.5, corresponding to a companion mass of ~40 Jupiter masses for an assumed age of 5 Gyr at the mean distance of the objects in the survey, 5.8 pc.

8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in AJ

References in corpus (6)

• The Formation of Brown Dwarfs as Ejected Stellar Embryos
• Brown Dwarf Companions to G-type Stars. I: Gliese 417B and Gliese 584C
• Substellar Companions to Main Sequence Stars: No Brown Dwarf Desert at Wide Separations
• Three Wide-Separation L dwarf Companions from the Two Micron All Sky Survey: Gl 337C, Gl 618.1B, and HD 89744B
• Coronagraphic Survey for Companions of Stars within 8 pc
• Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs of the Young Open Cluster IC2391

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• A Possible Brown Dwarf Companion to the White Dwarf GD1400
• Diffraction-limited Visible Light Images of Orion Trapezium Cluster With the Magellan Adaptive Secondary AO System (MagAO)
• The Solar Neighborhood IX: Hubble Space Telescope Detections of Companions to Five M and L Dwarfs within 10 pc of the Sun
• Discovery of a Wide Substellar Companion to a Nearby Low-Mass Star
• Discovery of a Tight Brown Dwarf Companion to the Low Mass Star LHS 2397a
• Southern wide very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in resolved binary and multiple systems
• High Resolution Images of Orbital Motion in the Orion Trapezium Cluster with the LBT Adaptive Optics System
• Stellar Multiplicity and Debris Disks: An Unbiased Sample
• A 3D Search for Companions to 12 Nearby M-Dwarfs
• An HST Search for Substellar Companions in the Young Cluster IC 348
• Occurrence Rates from Direct Imaging Surveys
• An active M8.5 dwarf wide companion to the M4/DA binary LHS4039/LHS4040
• High Resolution Images of Orbital Motion in the Trapezium Cluster: First Scientific Results from the MMT Deformable Secondary Mirror Adaptive Optics System
• The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. A sub-Neptunian mass planet in the habitable zone of HN Lib